The Division of Perceptual Studies

"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge,
never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they
led."

-Thomas Jefferson (1814)

Information about the Division of
Perceptual Studies

The Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS),
formerly the Division of Personality Studies, is a unit of the
Department
of Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences at the
University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, VA. The Division of Perceptual
Studies (DOPS) was founded as a research unit of the
Department of Psychiatric Medicine at UVA by Dr. Ian Stevenson in
1967. (seeHistory and Descriptionfor more information about the founding of
DOPS).

Watch a video of Dr. Jim
Tucker describing a young boy who has memories of a previous life
in which he was his own grandfather. In this video, Dr. Tucker
discusses his own research as well as the research conducted by the
esteemed founder of DOPS, the late Dr. Ian Stevenson.Click
hereto view the video.

Listen to Dr. Jim Tuckerdescribe some of
the findings, including unusual play, behavior patterns, specific
phobias, and birthmarks or birth defects specifically related to the
life and death of a previous personality. He discusses the
interpretation of the data and details about the methodology as well as
possible pitfalls of individual cases. This interview was
conducted byDean
Radin Ph.D.on December 8, 2010. This
interview was done for theIONS Telseminars series. Dean
Radin is well known for his best selling books The Conscious
Universe (HarperOne, 1997) and Entangled Minds (Simon
& Schuster, 2006). Dr. Radin is currently Senior
Scientist at theInstitute of Noetic
Sciences(IONS) and Adjunct Faculty in the
Department of Psychology at Sonoma State University.

This video is an excerpt of aNour Foundation panel discussionat
the September 11, 2008 United Nations Symposium, "Beyond the
Mind-Body Problem: New Paradigms in the Science of Consciousness,"
In this video, Dr. Bruce Greyson is discussing "Near Death
Experiences-Beyond the Mind Body Problem".Click
hereto view the video.

Here is another excerpt from the sameNour Foundation panel discussionin 2008.
In this portion of the video, Dr. Greyson is discussing the idea of
consciousness beyond physical brain activity.Click
hereto view the video.

Radio Interviews onthe topic of
Near Death Experiences:

Listen to Dr. Bruce Greysondiscussing how
cumulative research into Near Death Experiences challenges both a
classical physical view of reality and an exclusively
neuroscience-based view of consciousness. This interview was
conducted byDean
Radin Ph.D.on October 13, 2010. The
interview was done for theIONS Teleseminars series. Dean
Radin is well known for his best selling books The Conscious
Universe (HarperOne, 1997) and Entangled Minds (Simon
& Schuster, 2006). Dr. Radin is currently Senior
Scientist at theInstitute of Noetic
Sciences(IONS) and Adjunct Faculty in the
Department of Psychology at Sonoma State University.

Listen to Dr. Bruce Greyson discussing Near
Death Experiences in an interview from November,
2006, hosted by Sarah McConnell on the
award winning public radio programWith Good
Reason.

Other areaswe are interested in
studying at the Division of Perceptual Studies:

Recent books written by the DOPS
research faculty

Beyond Physicalism: Toward
Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality is the product
of an unusual fellowship of scientists and humanities scholars who
dispute the view that reality is purely physical, and that human beings
are nothing more than extremely complicated biological machines. In
their previous publication,
Irreducible Mind, the authors argued that the notion of
physicalism cannot accommodate various well-evidenced empirical
phenomena including paranormal or psi phenomena, postmortem survival,
and mystical experiences. In this new theory oriented companion volume,
the authors go further by attempting to understand how the world must
be constituted in order that these so-called "rogue" phenomena can
occur. Drawing on empirical science, metaphysical philosophy, and the
mystical traditions, the authors work toward an improved "big picture"
of the general character of reality, one which strongly overlaps
territory traditionally occupied by the world's institutional
religions, and which attempts to reconcile science and spirituality by
finding a middle path between the polarized fundamentalisms, religious
and scientific, that have dominated recent public discourse.

Dr. Jim Tucker, in a follow-up to his book Life
Before Life, explores American cases of young
children who report specific memories of previous lives. Dr.
Tucker has interviewed a number of extraordinary children with memories
of past lives. Return to Life focuses mostly on American
cases, presenting each family's story and describing his
investigation into the cases. His goal is to determine what
happened-what the child has said, how the parents have reacted, whether
the child's statements match the life of a particular deceased person,
and whether the child could have learned such information through
normal means. Dr. Tucker has found cases that provide persuasive
evidence that some children do, in fact, possess memories of previous
lives.

To find out more about this book and other aspects of Dr. Tucker's
research follow this link to his website .

Ian Stevenson was a prominent and internationally-known
psychiatrist, researcher, prolific author, and well-regarded figure in
the field of psychical research. Science, the Self,
and Survival after Death: Selected Writings of Ian
Stevenson is the first book devoted to surveying the
entirety of his work and the extraordinary scope and variety of his
research. He studied universal questions that cut to the core of a
person’s identity: What is consciousness? How did we become the unique
individuals that we are? Do we survive in some form after death?
Stevenson’s writings on the nature of science and the mind-body
relationship, as well as his empirical research, demonstrate his
strongly held belief that the methods of science can be applied
successfully to such humanly vital questions. Featuring a selection of
his papers and excerpts from his books, this collection presents the
larger context of Stevenson’s work and illustrates the issues and
questions that guided him throughout his
career. Our esteemed colleague, Emily Williams
Kelly, is the editor of this collection of Dr. Stevenson's
writing.

The Handbook of
Near-Death Experience: Thirty Years of
Investigation In this book, DOPS researchers Bruce
Greyson, Carlos Alvarado, Nancy Zingrone, Edward F. Kelly,
and Emily Williams Kelly as well as many other notable researchers
in the field of near-death experiences share the history and current
state of near-death experience research and knowledge. They
explore controversies in the field, offer specific accounts of
NDE's from the research, and express their hopes for the future of
investigation into this fascinating phenomenon. The book is edited by
Janice Miner Holden, Bruce Greyson, and Debbie James.

Edward F. Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly,
Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso,
and Bruce Greyson have co-authored Irreducible Mind: Toward a
Psychology for the 21st Century. Current
mainstream scientific opinion holds that all aspects of human mind and
consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in the
brain. This book demonstrates with empirical evidence that this
reductive materialism is not only incomplete but false.